also, one has been the role of senator mitch mcconnell? guest: the line that comes from the speakers office all the time is the line of communication remain open. i don't know how much talking they did as the president was in hawaii spending time with his family and the speaker was back home in ohio, i believe. i don't know that for sure. everyone was doing their family time and not really working that significantly on something. i think there was probably some minimal conversation, but not a lot. as for the senate minority leader mitch mcconnell, i think that is a good one. a lot has been made in the past few days about him taking a higher profile role in these negotiations. while i don't like prognosticating into the future, we can look at the past in some of the previous negotiations of congress and the kind of role he has played. almost all of these talks, whether it was about government shutdown in the spring of 2011 or the debt limit debate in the summer of 2011 or the payroll tax-cut debate last year, those negotiations started at a